1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to customer hierarchies. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method for creating self-built customer hierarchies over a network wherein an invitation is sent to one or more customers to join a hierarchy. The invitation to join the hierarchy is sent by an originating customer (the hierarchy builder) to another customer. Upon accepting the invitation, a response to the invitation is sent to the hierarchy builder by the other customer, and selected portions of the other customer's hierarchy is added to the hierarchy builder's hierarchy.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the pre-paid calling market, mobile phones are generally sold as a commodity. This is in contrast to traditional contract based mobile phone sales which typically characterize the post-paid calling market. Due to the lack of service contracts within the pre-paid calling market, a user, or customer, of the pre-paid mobile phone can be anonymous to an operator, and thus there is typically no customer support at and after the point of sale of the pre-paid mobile phone. Nevertheless, it would be beneficial if operators were able to offer these customers the possibility of consolidating their mobile phone subscriptions into one account structure, as consolidating their mobile phone subscriptions into one account brings benefits to mobile phone users, such as allowing the users to be able to manage their subscriptions, transfer balances between subscriptions, and reload their pre-paid subscriptions at different levels, for example. In turn, such benefits facilitate a higher level of customer satisfaction, strengthening the customer-operator relationship, and thus lowering customer churn.
Traditionally, however, only post-paid (i.e. contract) customers have benefited from customer hierarchies, which typically have been managed by telecom operators. This is due to how traditional pre-paid mobile phone subscriptions are structured.
For example, FIG. 1 shows the structure of traditional pre-paid mobile phone service accounts and subscriptions for two mobile phones A and B (not shown). A pre-paid mobile telecom service account, mobile phone A pre-paid account 10, is associated with a single pre-paid subscription, mobile phone A pre-paid subscription 20. A monetary balance is stored in mobile phone A pre-paid subscription 20, enabling an initial or continuing use of mobile phone A.
A separate pre-paid mobile telecom service account, mobile phone B pre-paid account 30, is associated with a single pre-paid subscription, mobile phone B subscription 40. A monetary balance is stored in mobile phone subscription 40, enabling an initial or continuing use of mobile phone B. As mobile phones A and B have mutually exclusive subscriptions and accounts, the owners and/or users of mobile phones A and B can not share benefits only available to post-paid customers, such as account consolidation and access to bundled rates or volume discounts given to accounts with multiple subscriptions directly associated with the accounts. Moreover, as it is common for one family, company, or organization to have more than one mobile phone subscription, and as a telecom operator is not aware of the commonly owned multiple subscriptions, the telecom operator can not award the benefits of accumulated usage and other charges to the common owner.
However, even if the telecom operator were aware of the commonly owned multiple subscriptions, traditional post-paid consolidated subscription management is very expensive and involves specially trained telecom operator staff to manage the consolidated subscriptions. Thus, it would be advantageous if the operators could offer to customers the option of consolidating their mobile phone subscriptions into one account structure, which, in turn, would bring benefits to the users by allowing them to be able to manage their balances, transfer their balances between subscriptions, and reload their subscriptions at different levels.
In situations where families or small companies purchase multiple mobile phones, it would further be advantageous for the purchasers to organize their pre-paid mobile phone accounts into a hierarchy for consolidated reporting, budgeting, and payment allocations. However, a problem arises as there is no relationship between the phones themselves, due to the phones typically being purchased at different times and/or at different locations. The purchasers typically have only two options in this situation: the first is to convince a mobile phone customer service center that they own all of the mobile phones, and request that the service center create a hierarchy, and the second is to make do without a hierarchy.
Therefore, a need exists for a method wherein the purchasers or customers can negotiate their own hierarchies with other customers, in order to receive the benefits listed above associated with consolidated accounts and subscriptions.